Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
-- The Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Muddle headed

For the past two weeks I have not been able to focus properly on my job. Here I am, for instance, blogging instead of working. I've prayed, I've taken small steps, I've blundered and bumbled and nothing is wretchely behind, but nothing is leaping forward, either. And since I work for a church denomination and all we do is supposed to be for the glory of God, I feel particularly guilty and inadequate.

It doesn't help that my three-year-old often wakes up several times a night or that three mornings of the week I have to limp out of bed at 5 a.m. Sometimes I find myself nodding off in front of the computer. I find myself eating too much in a feeble attempt to wake myself.

Lately I've been trying to improve my routines. Actually, I'm trying to construct them from whole cloth. I grew up in a patholgocially unstructured environment. One of my favorite shows was the Brady Bunch; I tried to immitate their household, making up the beds just so, carefully folding down the sheets at night. I still don't know how anyone could sleep bound to the matress that way. Anyway, I would start the summer by constructing an elaborate schedule that inevitably fell apart, as I lacked the tenacity to stick with such an unfamiliar project. No wonder I loved going back to school in the fall--school was rigidly structured and I could just pour myself into it. So, here I am trying to run a household and raise two children and I really have no clue about the stuff that most people learned as a matter of course. Budgeting, meal planning, cleaning, preparing for holidays or special events--they're all mysteries to me. But I do now have a set of routines so that I can actually get my kids on their buses on time. And I resent those routines. My entire day is swallowed up by a sequence of small, dull steps that fit together to form one dull life. Blah.